The subject matter of the present specification generally relates to the art of machine and/or computer vision systems. Exemplary embodiments disclosed herein find particular application in conjunction with restaurant environments, and they will be described herein with particular reference thereto. However, it is to be appreciated that various exemplary embodiments such as those disclosed herein are also amenable to other like applications and/or other types of environments, e.g., such as stores, offices, public facilities, etc.
In various retail settings and/or other like environments (e.g., such as a store or restaurant), it can be desirable to keep track of several common activities, conditions, statuses and/or occurrences which may arise during the course of operations at that location. For example, in a typical restaurant setting, these may include table occupancy, overfilled trashcans, restroom use, the availability of condiments, straws, cups, plastic ware, napkins, etc. at dispensing locations, the cleanliness of various surfaces, such as floors, tables, counters and/or windows, etc. In practice, those conditions that one might normally want to address in one way or another may go unnoticed and/or unattended for long periods of time, which can reduce customer satisfaction and may even result in a direct or indirect loss of revenue. For example, customers may leave the store or restaurant if they see that there are no open and clean tables, or may not return to the store or restaurant in the future based on a negative experience. At times, these issues may be noticed by a manager and/or other employee at the location; however, because of understaffing, busy workloads and/or other factors, it may not be readily feasible to always provide the proper amount of resources to notice and/or address each concern.
The aforementioned store resources (e.g., where a store resource is generally used herein to denote a good or service or other activity provided by and/or in the store) are commonly maintained and/or attended to by one or more employees of the store or other individuals. One customary approach for maintaining some store resources involves attending to various resources on a regular time-based schedule. For example, restrooms are cleaned and/or restocked with toilet paper, paper towels and/or hand soap at regularly scheduled intervals, trashcans are emptied at set times, condiments are re-filled on a preset schedule, etc. However, maintaining and/or attending to store resources on a preset schedule runs the risk of, on one hand, wasting employee time and/or man-hours on items which may not yet benefit from attention or maintenance (e.g., emptying a trashcan that is significantly less than full or restocking a bathroom that still has plenty of supplies, etc.); and on the other hand, there is the risk of not addressing a concern or issue in due time (e.g., an unattended trashcan can overflow with garbage, condiments and/or other supplies may be completely depleted from their dispensers, etc.).
Therefore, it is desirable to have a system and/or method operative in a retail, store or other like environment which does not rely solely on a preset schedule for the maintenance and/or attending to of store resources.
Accordingly, a new and/or improved method and/or system is disclosed herein which monitors an environment for one or more given conditions and automatically provides alerts and/or notifications upon detection thereof.